Shares of tech company Workday pop almost 10% after Wal-Mart deal

Tech company Workday (WDAY) saw shares rise nearly 10 percent on Wednesday, after the announcement that Wal-Mart (WMT) had purchased a subscription to its human resources platform.

Trading of shares of Workday (WDAY)'s stock were halted earlier on the New York Stock Exchange, pending release of material news. Shares of the enterprise software company were up more than 8.5 percent before the halt, after William Blair's Justin Furby wrote that the company had "recently signed an HR deal with one of the world's largest employers, with over 2 million employees globally."

The California-based technology company said it would not update its fourth-quarter or fiscal-year financial guidance based on the announcement, according to an SEC filing. Over the past year, the company has also secured clients like Panera Bread (PNRA).

The contract comes just a day after a Wall Street Journal report that Wal-Mart is preparing to cut nearly 1,000 corporate jobs.

Workday sells cloud-based applications for finance and human resources, such as programs for expenses, payroll and benefits management. While Workday programs have a reputation as being easy to use among its multinational customers, it faces growing competition from companies like Oracle (ORCL) and SAP, Nomura analyst Frederick Grieb wrote last month.

The company had also seen big customers hesitate to make deals over the past year, CEO Aneel Bhusri said in a December earnings conference call.

"I'd say there were a handful of large multinationals, a couple in the financial services space that are trying to figure out what Brexit means and now what our presidential election means to them," Bhusri said, according to a FactSet transcript. "And they just said, hey, we're going to hold off on making a final decision."

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